The present invention relates to real-time interactive wagering on event outcomes. Event outcomes may be based on, for example, financial markets and indices, sporting and entertainment events, political events, games of chance, and natural phenomena such as weather and earthquakes. Wagers can be of a fixed-odds type or a spread-bet type (both described further below). Wagers can be placed on, for example, the change in the Consumer Price Index for a given month; a nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP); a casino's payout or winnings at blackjack over a given period; the team that will win baseball's World Series; the actor that will win an Academy Award; and the price movement of individual stocks, gold, commodities, or any real-time index. Events on which wagers can be placed include both those with known and unknown outcome probabilities. The present invention does not, however, involve trading of financial instruments.
Current wagering systems are often slow and inefficient, and thus do not offer clients real-time wagering. Many known systems conduct wagering manually by telephone. Even known online wagering systems do not offer real-time wagering. Processing delays are commonly incurred between initially placing a wager and receiving confirmation of that wager. For example, after a client places a wager, the client's available credit is usually checked before the wager is accepted and confirmed. During such processing delays, the price of a desired wager can and often does change. Thus clients may not at times get the prices originally presented. Moreover, presented wager prices are typically not current, but often may lag actual prices by as much as 5-10 minutes. Another disadvantage of known wagering systems is their limited selection of events on which to wager. Known systems and methods generally cannot easily establish wagering on customized or client-requested events, such as, for example, the snowfall in New York's Central Park next Christmas Day.
In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to provide real-time interactive wagering on event outcomes.
It would also be desirable to provide real-time interactive wagering on event outcomes with real-time transaction confirmation.
It would further be desirable to provide real-time interactive wagering on event outcomes with real-time management of client-wagering credit.
It would still further be desirable to provide real-time interactive wagering on event outcomes with automatic wager-tracking indices.
It would yet further be desirable to provide real-time interactive wagering on event outcomes with automatic dealer hedging.
It would also be desirable to provide real-time interactive wagering on event outcomes with automatic price-spread adjustments.
It would further be desirable to provide real-time interactive wagering on event outcomes with automatic forward price setting.
It would still further be desirable to provide real-time interactive wagering on event outcomes with selectable foreign or domestic currencies.